In that case, so is replying. Yet you seem to care enough about justifying your position (perhaps to yourself) to reply, so don't give me this nihilistic bullshit.

It's called a rant. People do it on Facebook and Twitter all the time, and on forums for even longer. I care enough to reply, because it's bothered me for ages. Trust me, this will be the last I say of it but won't be the last anyone else says of it.

which makes it a safe bet that you are, too -- probably also Christian, probably believe faith is a virtue.

Technically I'm Greek Orthodox but I'm not practicing. I'm not ready to say there is no God, but I'm not prepared to believe in a God either.

Am I going to win? Not really. I do hope to reinforce separation of church and state, to promote actual science education instead of "Intelligent Design", and to establish some basic rights the religious would deny, like the right to marry. I'd love to see people tolerate less of the extremists. I really doubt I'm going to see the religious become a minority in my lifetime.

Good, you're realistic about your hopes and hence are someone who understands how the real world works (compared to some zealots who can't see reason).

But you know what? I'd like to think that when I'm lying on my deathbed, I lived for things that matter.

Ditto. I suppose we just have differing opinions as to what matters enough.

ou're right, it shouldn't. But this is the world we live in, and there are some issues which tend towards exactly that -- either you're a good little worker propping up the status quo, or you're actually helping to move things forward.

And life should be meaningful -- and it's up to you to find that meaning. Maybe you honestly don't care, but that's not what I'm hearing. What I'm hearing is that you do care, you're just too lazy to do anything about it anymore.

Yet somehow, you're not too lazy to post, and to try to justify how much you don't care. That says a lot.

I've tried to convert to Linux, on and off, for about 5 years. Believe me it's not for a lack of trying. However, time has caught up with me and it's become clear that instead of actually using my computer, I've instead focused more on trying to get the Linux desktop up to scratch with the standards I've become accustomed to in Windows. I've given up because I've realized how much time I've wasted try to achieve something I ALREADY HAVE (i.e. Windows), so why am I making life more difficult for myself?

I care because of all the suck effort I guess. All that time I won't get back for a pursuit that wasn't (for me) a worthy goal.

Sneaking the word "Open" into this specification was a really dirty trick by Microsoft because

I'm not sure "sneaking" is the correct term here - the word is used several times in the specification, so it's not like they're trying to hide the word from view somehow.

Also, how is it a dirty trick? There's no dirt involved really, even if the standard isn't as open as we'd like. It's a simple tactic that worked, so maybe you're just annoyed that it worked.

I'm sorry you've given up. It also means you've become part of the problem -- you're yet another person who might one day decide to email me a docx instead of a pdf, an odf, or even html.

Here's the thing - we're all gonna die in the end, so all these fights against proprietary formats won't mean jack. On my deathbed I doubt I'm gonna care any longer about whether I should have kept up the good fight and regret my decision to move to more proprietary systems. No-one will care.

In life we pick the battles we can fight. These are potentially important issues, but basically given you're effectively saying about 90% of people are part of the "problem", I don't give a fuck anymore. Life shouldn't have to be some damn crusade.

I wish I understood how moderation works as well, so that I could look-up who marked me as a troll for what is clearly a non-troll comment.

Then again, you can't make a level-headed comment about anything involving politics before some dumbfuck rages against you.

This is why I can never bring myself to move to Linux and cut ties with Windows entirely. It's just too much hassle when you end up having to interact with content produced using Windows-only software and you cannot guarantee perfect parsing of the file formats used.

I confess, Windows 7 with Office 2010 has basically meant I've given up. It's time to give up the fight against Microsoft and succumb. There are too many other stresses and important things in life to give a shit anymore about open-source and freedom and whatnot, particularly since you're surrounded by people (real, physical people and not Internet avatars) who don't care about such things and hence you can't have a useful discussion with them about.

The world is not moving towards greater openness. I don't think we can win anymore. It's fucking depressing.

He might say he "strongly favors" this and that, but it's quite likely his power is much more limited than people realize. He's just one man against an entire bureaucracy with established connections between various groups that aren't going to be particularly willing to budge, no matter what he says. For him to make a difference he would have to put his political career on the line and risk significant retribution from those who don't want the change he's after.

For this reason I'm not sure whether to blame Obama just yet. Of course, maybe he was just naive in thinking he could conduct change without any personal risk.

Transparent aluminum is called sapphire, its existed for millenia.

Wow, I bet you're a BIG hit at (Star Trek) parties...

If I were the judge presiding over this case, the first thing I'd do is ask Walker Digital to explain why it took eight years before they decided to start suing publishers/developers, despite there being a number of games released earlier which supposedly infringed on their patent. If they couldn't reasonably explain the delay in such a way as to allay my suspicious that they simply wanted to hold off litigation until they had a lot of guys to go after for maximum returns, I'd tell them (in legal speak of course) to fuck off.

But I am no lawyer of course, and I have no idea if it would be as simple as that.

Heck, you don't have a right to bitch anyway about something that's free.

With all due respect, this is a bullshit argument I see time and time again.

If someone gave you a human shit as a present (literally), would you not bitch about it? Who cares if it's free? Being free doesn't absolve it of being shit (literally or otherwise). I don't think it has anything to do with a right to bitch about it or not, but you will anyway, and with good reason.

For this reason, if Linux isn't working for someone and they're getting bitchy about it, don't blame the victim. It may simply suck or not be suited to them, and so long as you can recognize Linux isn't perfect (something fanboys are incapable of), that's a start.

It's not one of the game listed in the article, but my favorite example of a shitty sequel has to be Deus Ex 2 (Deus Ex - Invisible War).

The original Deus Ex was, and still is, a masterpiece. Good storytelling, good dialog and writing in many areas, plus an immersive environment which rewarded exploration of every nook and cranny with extra equipment, datapads providing even more literature, and so on. The game is still fun to play because of its depth and the player's ability to explore and try out different wants to accomplish a task, whether it be via the "rambo" approach, a silent-but-deadly assassin, a non-lethal stun prod master, or just a guy who wanted to avoid combat as much as possible so that the enemy never even knew he was there. Of course it has its problems. The AI is crap, the stealth is fun but flawed; if you are seen for a moment but then hide behind a desk, so long as you were only visible for a brief moment the enemy will forget you were there and not even bother to investigate. The graphics are OK but were somewhat dated at release, however all of its flaws don't take away from the quality of the game's design.

All people really wanted in Deus Ex 2 was more of the same as the original, but with the flaws removed, the graphics updated, and so on. What did we get? A game which was a shallow, pale imitation to its predecessor with all the heart stripped from it. The lead platform was the original XBox so levels had to be made far smaller. Some people would say this meant level design would be tighter, with more stuff densely packed to get rid of the empty large areas, but there was enough dense level design in the original that I don't see such qualities as being mutually exclusive. The game was streamlined to require less items overall, but there were other rubbish designs. You couldn't lean anymore, cameras showed a clear beam where they were looking which made them far easier to avoid (as if real cameras would do such a thing anyway), etc.

Making a game more accessible to people is not a bad decision in theory, but if it makes the game way too easy then where's the challenge? There's a reason why people remember the original game and not its sequel. Here's hoping Human Revolution will not make the same mistakes. It's still primarily a console game for the current generation of gamers so I don't expect it to be exactly like the original, but so long as they add enough depth and challenge to make it interesting, it should turn out alright.

Even though I'm a PC gamer I have to agree. I've played FPSes for probably about 15 years too, but I can't be arsed getting so damn obsessive over it. It's too much energy expended in something trivial.

This story is about as far from Slashdot's slogan as you can get.

Commercial games are, for the most part, dead on the Linux desktop. There are some occasional exceptions but for the most part, if you want a big-name game to appear on Linux you're gonna have to go use WINE as native builds probably won't exist. That said, there are still quite a lot of decent older games which have Linux ports and Ryan does continue development on ports for commercial when he can.

I think if you really want to avoid disappointment with regards to Linux gaming and want to continue enjoying gaming on Linux... get used to indy games, and forget the big-budget commercial stuff. Indy developers need all the audience they can get and as the Humble Bundles have shown, Linux users are often the most generous per purchase due to a desperate need for games. :)

Big-name commercial studios like EPIC and iD have abandoned Linux (unlike his previous games John Carmack has expressed a certain doubt about supporting Linux with Rage). It would certainly be NICE if we could get more commercial support, but until that happens, it's less depressing to just aim for indy games.

No, but you can bypass it with 1 multitool

But only if you're got 'Master' electronics training.

Aren't updates tested before being pushed out? Or would useful testing of definitions take too long with modern AV software that they just pass the barest of qualifications before being approved?